Mom Shares Touching Encounter Between Her Toddler and Grieving Grandfather

It’s not uncommon for 18-month-old Owen to say “hi” and “bye” to everyone he meets, so his mom, Alyssa Hacker, wasn’t at all surprised when he yelled “hi!” to an elderly man while they were shopping at a Target in Fort Smith, Arkansas over the weekend.

“Hey sweet boy," the stranger replied as he approached their shopping cart. Owen was in the front playing with three stuffed dinosaurs (he was trying to decide which one he wanted most) and Hacker says the man didn’t think twice before joining him.

“With this crazy world we live in I was a little hesitant as to how close he was with Owen,” Hacker recalls in a now-viral Facebook post recounting the interaction. Hacker told Today that she’s usually on high alert when it comes to strangers, especially around her child, but something about this man was different. She didn’t feel at all uneasy. "That's not like me," she explained. "I'm always in mommy protective mode, but I know this was a God thing that happened."

this momma just cried in the middle of Target. We were at target waiting on Grammi and we found some dinosaurs. Owen...

What occured next brought tears to her eyes. “The man got his wallet out and pulled a $20 out, he put it in Owen’s pocket on his shirt and said ‘I just lost my two-year old grandson last week. You take this money and buy this boy all three dinosaurs.’”

She says the man then rubbed Owen’s back, wiped his tears and walked off. After Owen yelled "thank you" the gentleman turned around and yelled “Boomer Sooner!”

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“There is still some good in this world,” Hacker concluded her post along with a photo of Owen investigating the $20 bill in his front pocket.

“Everyone can use a reminder that there are still good people in this crazy, mixed-up world," she told Today, and we couldn’t agree more.